Saturday, January 30, 2010

There are so many reasons why having a Linux distribution on a USB drive can come in handy. From having a “rescue” OS on your keyring to being able to install a new distribution on your EeePC, a “thumb drive” Linux has many uses.

But getting Linux onto a USB drive can’t be simple. Right? Wrong. There is a tool, UNetbootin, that makes installing Linux

on a USB drive simple.

UNetbootin can be used on either Linux or Windows. In this article, we’ll be illustrating it for Both.

Note: Not all USB installations will work on all machines. This can be an issue with your BIOS or your USB drive.

If you install an OS that doesn’t work, try another. But after all that work, you might wind up with a machine that simply won’t boot from a USB drive. You have been warned.

Using UNetbootin with Linux

The first thing to do is download a copy of UNetbootin. For our purposes we’ll download the Linux universal install binary (named unetbootin-linux-299). Once that has finished you will need to issue the Following command in order to make the file executable.

# chmod u+x unetbootin-linux29

Once the file is executable issue the following command (from the same directory unetbootin-linx-299 is stored) to see the application running.

# su ./unetbootin-linux-299

But you’re not ready just yet. Depending upon your distribution, you might come across an error involving p7zip-full. This might be in your distribution’s repositories. If you use Mandriva you can install p7zip but you will not have the full package. If you use Ubuntu you can get p7zip-full with the following command

# apt-get install p7zip-full

Before you run the application you will need to insert and mount your usb drive. Stick in your usb drive and then issue the following command to find out where your usb drive is located.

# dmesg

Mount that and then issue the following command. When you issue the command you will see the UNetbootin window.

# su ./unetbootin-linux-299

Once this window is up and running you are almost there. If you have very specific needs for your distribution you will most likely have an image file downloaded to use. If you do not you can select your distribution from the drop down list. First you select the distribution and then you select the version (or release). Note: Unless you have a very large USB drive you will most likely want to use a netinstall version of your distribution. If you do happen to have a large USB drive you can go ahead with a full distribution. If this usb drive is for rescue purposes, or just to have a version of Linux with you at all times, a distribution like PCLinuxOS Minime is a greate choice.

Once the process is done you will have two buttons to click, Reboot and Exit. Don’t bother with the Reboot button. Click the Exit button and UNetbootin will close. You can now unmount your drive and reboot your machine to see if the installation works.Note: When your machine boots you will need to make sure it first boots from the USB device.